While waiting to see what Melanie would touch first—he hoped behind his ears, because it itched like hell—someone poured something into his wound and a blinding pain rushed through his body. What the fuck? Were they trying to kill him?
He gritted his teeth and just barely resisted roaring into his female’s ear. His dragon pushed and growled to come out again. His beast said, We need to knock the dragon-shifters away again. The pain is proof they are trying to kill us. They will use our weakness against us.
Tristan growled inside his head. Our female is right next to us. If we roar or thrash about, we will hurt her, maybe even kill her. Is that what you want?
No. I never want to hurt her. She is our mate.
Then shut it and leave me alone for awhile.
His inner beast grudgingly retreated to the back of Tristan’s mind.
As the pain dulled slightly, he could feel Melanie stroking his snout. His human said, “It was just some antiseptic. Stop acting like a big baby.”
He tried his best to frown, but dragons didn’t do facial expressions all that well.
Still, Melanie laughed and the sound helped to ease both the dragon and the man. She gave him a pat and said, “Men. No matter if they’re human or dragon-shifter, they’re all the same. If you’re this bad when you’re hurt, I hate to see what you’re like when you catch a cold.”
Tristan growled and decided right then and there he was going to live because he wanted to feel what it was like to have Melanie take care of him.
Something must’ve shown in his eyes because Melanie tapped his snout a few times and said, “Don’t get any ideas. You have to be can’t-get-out-of-bed sick before I start giving you any special treatment. Faking a headache isn’t going to make me wait on you hand and foot.”
He grunted in disappointment, not that he hadn’t expected anything less.
Melanie waved a hand. “But now that you’re acting yourself again, let’s go back to the part of me getting to touch you.” She ran a finger from his snout up to his eye ridge and scratched. “How about here?”
While it wasn’t bad, he wanted her hands to keep going so he blinked three times. She frowned. “Okay, let’s try something else. I know you’re not a dog or cat, but how about here?”
She scratched behind his ear. He leaned into her touch and hummed in contentment. A dragon-shifter could learn to get use to this.
His inner dragon poked his head out again and said, Yes, she is our mate. You must keep her. We love her.
Tristan stopped humming and tried to process what his inner beast was saying. Yes, his dragon had been half in love with the human since the first day, but did the human part of him feel the same?
He didn’t get the chance to think on it because Melanie stopped scratching as the clan’s head doctor, a female dragon-shifter named Dr. Sid, came to stand in his line of sight. She said, “We’ve stopped the bleeding, Tristan, but I’ll have to put you under to fix all of the damage. Nod if you will allow us to do this. The sooner I can cut you open and repair the rest of the damage, the better.”
Tristan didn’t like being unconscious in the hands of anyone, except maybe his human.
Then Melanie leaned against his snout and whispered into his ear, “I’ll watch over you, Tristan, and make sure they don’t try to sneak out any organs, or whatever strange dragon things are inside of you that I have no idea about.”
He snorted. Like he had secret treasures stashed inside of him. His human could be silly.
But if Melanie watched over him, he would trust her not to let them harm him. She could stand up to just about any dragon-shifter if she put her mind to it.
For reasons he didn’t want to think about right now, that made everything suddenly seem all right. He nodded to Sid and she turned her back to start ordering her team to get things ready for surgery.
In the meantime, he simply leaned against his human and into her caresses, wanting to memorize her touch. While his chances at living were better than before, he could still die. But the more Melanie accepted and maybe even cared for him, the more fuel it gave both him and his dragon to live.
Chapter Four
Melanie paced in front of the large tent that had been constructed over Tristan’s dragon-form for surgery. Cassidy—or, as most people seemed to call her, Sid—had finally kicked her out once she’d started cutting into the dragon. Not that Mel could blame her. Her little dragon baby had decided that the sight of blood and knives was not okay, and had thrown her a crippling wave of nausea.
Now that she was back outside in the fresh air, however, her stomach had settled, allowing her mind to whirl through all the possible outcomes. She dismissed half of them because she refused to believe Tristan would die.